"Religion and Politics" – Cluster of Excellence at the WWU Münster

The Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics in Pre-Modern and Modern Cultures” was founded in 2007 at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. Some 200 academics from more than 20 disciplines in the humanities and social sciences and from around 14 countries deal with the relationship of religion and politics across epochs and cultures. It is nationally the largest research association of its kind and of the 43 Clusters of Excellence in Germany, it is the only one to deal with religion. full story

A fundamental work on the role of religion in modern societies by sociologists Detlef Pollack and Gergely Rosta from Münster University’s Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” has now been published in English by Oxford University Press under the title of “Religion and Modernity: An International Comparison”.

Time has always held a fascination for human beings, who have attempted to relate to it and to make sense of it, constructing and deconstructing it through its various prisms, since time cannot be experienced in an unmediated way.

The widely acclaimed monograph “The Culture of Ambiguity” by the Arabist and Leibniz prize winner Prof. Dr. Thomas Bauer of the Excellence Cluster “Religion and Politics” of the University of Münster has been recently translated into Arabic.

The new theories of religious diversity of the scholar of religious studies Prof. Dr. Perry Schmidt-Leukel from the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” attract interest from researchers in China. The Minzu University of China in Beijing has invited the scholar to present his fractal interpretation of religious diversity and to discuss it together with Chinese scholars.

Why does the German society today have difficulties with the diversity of religion in its country? Why do many people view the growing religious plurality sceptically and ask themselves which religion is the “right one”? Contemporary historian Prof. Dr. Thomas Großbölting is fascinated by analysing how religion has stirred people in recent German history The video gives insight into his research project “Contemporary History of Religions” at the Cluster of Excellence.